innovation DAILY

Here we highlight selected innovation related articles from around the world on a daily basis. These articles related to innovation and funding for innovative companies, and best practices for innovation based economic development.

George David Clark’s recent post, “The Patience Problem,” and my own classroom experiences got me thinking about not just the energy crisis in the classroom at this time of year but, more specifically, the creativity crisis. As Clark says, students are loaded down more and more with work and other responsibilities. As a consequence, their creativity is stifled.

I recently watched a YouTube video of John Cleese talking about creativity. In it, he says space and time, among other things, are crucial elements for people to come up with original ideas. People who intend to be creative need to create an “oasis” by “setting boundaries of space and time,” he says. It has to be a quiet space with enough time to let the worries of life, which will inevitably overtake quiet thinking, slip away after a while. He also says that the most creative people stick with problems or questions longer and usually don’t take the easiest or first solution they can think of.

Mayor Vincent C. Gray unveiled a plan Wednesday that he said would create 100,000 jobs and generate $1 billion in revenue for the District over five years through initiatives that include developing McMillan Reservoir into a medical hub and attracting more foreign investors and tourists.

The ambitious plan was created through a partnership with the business schools at George Washington, Georgetown, Howard and American universities, which had a combined 16 MBA students working on the project with the schools’ deans.

A new era of business is in the works, and it involves the implementation of environmentally-sound initiatives that not only save companies money, but also reduce pollution, consumption, and waste in order to do less harm to the planet through the course of commercial operations. As public awareness of environmental issues continues to grow, so too does the call for products and services that cater to the eco-conscious consumer. With global warming, deforestation, and the depletion of limited natural resources to worry about, not to mention pollution and myriad other issues that affect our health, many people are looking for ways to do their part when it comes to reducing the carbon debt of humanity. And savvy businesses are finding ways to adopt standards and practices that meet the growing demands of a green public. But the evolutionary process has only just begun.

On Tuesday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced the first group of six external innovation fellows who will leverage technology to address critical health care needs, The Hill's "Healthwatch" reports (Baker, "Healthwatch," The Hill, 11/13).

Program Background In June, HHS announced the launch of the Innovation Fellows Program, which aims to recruit experts from outside the agency to work on four innovative health care projects that rely on health IT.

The projects will last for six to 12 months (iHealthBeat, 6/26).

Details of Participants The six external fellows were selected from a group of more than 100 innovators (Zigmond, Modern Healthcare, 11/13). They will be paired with HHS internal innovators, or "host fellows," to conduct their projects.

For the third consecutive year, Area Development magazine's editors have conducted a survey of a select group of highly respected location consultants who work with a nationwide client base. We asked the consultants to name their top-5 state choices in 14 site selection categories.

States were ranked in each of the 14 categories based on the number of times they were named as a "top-5" choice by the responding consultants. According to the results, the top-10 states for doing business are Texas, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina, Louisiana, Tennessee, Indiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma, in that order. Texas, which was cited more than 200 times overall, significantly led all other states as the consultants' #1 choice for doing business. The top-five states were each mentioned in at least 8 of 14 categories.

There were many ties filling the top-five slots, and then the remaining states that were named by at least 25 percent of the respondents were listed as "Next Best." However, in some categories, only four slots were filled because no other states had enough mentions to be listed.

Introduction Have you ever told a friend or family member something only to later find that he or she completely misunderstood you—or never heard you at all? People often tell each other about important information that is not properly received, even when the conversation occurs in a quiet setting at close range. Why does this happen? In this activity, you will learn why communication can be so difficult by probing the psychology of listening. You will also experience how much a simple spoken message can be distorted.

As an entrepreneur, your daily schedule is likely jam-packed with meetings, phone calls and other tasks necessary to keep your business on track. Maximizing productivity is a must, but working straight through your lunch break and eating a chocolate bar “al desko” may not be the answer.

Whether it’s critical team building over organic fare, a heart-pumping workout or just some quiet time alone, a mid-day break can refuel and refocus you and your team. We consulted 10 hip, young entrepreneurs from around the country about their lunch hour ritual and how it helps them rev up for the rest of the day.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA--(Marketwire - Nov 14, 2012) - Crowdfunding -- the social web strategies that entrepreneurial individuals and companies use to attract large pools of small investors -- is driving innovation in areas ranging from high-tech to entertainment. Now, the mainstream venture capital industry is taking notice. A new Program for Innovation in Entrepreneurial and Social Finance, launched today at the College of Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, will help to explain this new phenomenon and identify best practices in micro-, mobile- and early-stage entrepreneurial finance.

S. Shankar Sastry, dean of engineering at Berkeley, announced the initiative during the annual UC Berkeley Global Technology Leaders conference on campus held Nov. 13, 2012.

(PALM SPRINGS, Calif.) NOV. 15, 2012 – Resilience, innovation and a unique perspective on risk taking are just three of eight critical factors that separate the very best entrepreneurs from others, according to Ernst & Young LLP, which is honoring America's top entrepreneurs at its 26th annual Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® gala in Palm Springs on Saturday, November 17.

While the U.S. economy continues to wrestle with persistently high unemployment, slow growth and challenges from other developed and emerging economies, the more than 600 American companies named as finalists in the 2012 U.S. Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® program are creating jobs, expanding their businesses and planning for growth. Ernst & Young, in collaboration with the Kauffman Foundation, looked at what these companies are doing right, and in a new paper, "Defying gravity: High-growth entrepreneurship in a slow-growth economy," released today at the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum®, identify eight reasons why these exceptional companies are bucking the trend and finding success.

Although the professional, scientific, and technical industry sector makes up only 6% of the U.S. workforce, it was responsible for 10% of national job growth from 2010 to 2012. In addition, the broad industry (NAICS 54) grew by 6% in the past two years, which illustrates our nation’s march toward a more technical, STEM type workforce. There are over 9.2 million jobs in this industry, which is driven by sub-sectors like computer system design services and management, scientific, and technical consulting services.

Reinvigorating small business starts with identifying the high-growth firms that disproportionately drive economic activity and jobs. In an accompanying video, AOL cofounder Steve Case explains how big businesses can benefit too.

There’s mom. There’s apple pie. And there’s small business. As the US economy struggles to go on climbing out of the downturn and create jobs, no hero stands taller in the nation’s political and business psyche than the small-business owner. With good reason. Small businesses, defined as companies with fewer than 500 employees, account for almost two-thirds of all net new job creation. They also contribute disproportionately to innovation, generating 13 times as many patents, per employee, as large companies do.1 Sadly, small-business optimism is at its lowest levels in almost 20 years.2 After crashing in the recession, confidence remains below any level recorded since the early 1990s, because the recovery has been so anemic. Had small business come out of the recession maintaining just the rate of start-ups generated in 2007, the US economy would today have almost 2.5 million more jobs than it does.

Startup companies, particularly those that receive venture capital, are major engines of growth and innovation in America. Research from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has shown that much of the job growth in America in recent years has come from startups. That is why a recent Department of Labor proposal that would force startup companies to choose between revealing private commercial information and hiring skilled workers is troubling.

The Department of Labor has proposed dramatically expanding the information requested when employers seek to hire skilled foreign nationals on H-1B visas. A recent National Foundation for American Policy report concluded, “Simply because they choose to hire one or more foreign nationals, privately-held companies would be compelled to release such financial information as their annual revenues and salary structure, information often closely guarded by entrepreneurs and small businesses.”

"It's done," said European Commissioner Viviane Reding today. "The Commission has adopted my proposal for a European law so that women represent 40% of company board members by 2020."

Reding has often repeated, "I don't like quotas, but I like what they do." A controversial measure, hotly contested by a number of European countries and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic, the new law will come up against deeply entrenched assumptions about gender roles and divided opinions about the best way to increase the uncontested penury of women at the top of business organizations.

It’s a fact: ambitious entrepreneurs have a harder time in Europe than in some other parts of the world – but things are changing. In this conference, we look at some new, EU-supported approaches to entrepreneurship.

Topics for discussion:

The new Programme for the Competitiveness of Enterprises and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (COSME) with a planned budget of €2.5bn

Promoting entrepreneurialism is increasingly seen as a central plank of national economic strategy, as evidenced by a proliferation of entrepreneurship policies.

But what does the notion of an ‘entrepreneurial country’ mean? By now, it is widely accepted that an ‘entrepreneurial’ country does not simply mean that there are more entrepreneurs. After all, Uganda has the highest self-employment rate on the planet, followed closely by countries such as Peru. Even if these two countries have many merits, they are hardly leading examples of economic productivity and dynamism.

New Jersey doesn’t exactly have a reputation as a startup hub, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any ambitious tech entrepreneurs there. It could be that they just tend to migrate to more established locales like New York City and Philadelphia.

In an effort to keep that talent within the state, New Jersey angel investor Mario Casabona and partner Travis Kahn organized the TechLaunch startup incubator at Montclair State University. Today, six months and more than 90 submissions later, TechLaunch’s first class of 10 startups took the stage in Montclair to show off the fruits of their labor.

Entrepreneurs have no trouble focusing on how to build a product, and the good ones know how to find and nurture those first critical customers. Many, however, don’t know how to take their small business to the next level. What I’m talking about here is a level of discipline and skill necessary to collect and analyze the relevant business data, known as metrics.

Here is my selection of ten key metrics that every six-sigma joint like GE tracks without thinking, but too many small businesses only monitor haphazardly, if at all:

AS ocean waters warm, the Northeast is likely to face more Sandy-like storms. And as sea levels continue to rise, the surges of these future storms will be higher and even more deadly. We can’t stop these powerful storms. But we can reduce the deaths and damage they cause.

Hurricane Sandy’s immense power, which destroyed or damaged thousands of homes, actually pushed the footprints of the barrier islands along the South Shore of Long Island and the Jersey Shore landward as the storm carried precious beach sand out to deep waters or swept it across the islands. This process of barrier-island migration toward the mainland has gone on for 10,000 years.

John Grindley is the executive director of CoHabitat Foundation, whose Cohab workspace has become something of a hub for tech startups in the unlikely location of Shreveport, Louisiana. We caught up with Grindley to ask why you should consider bringing your startup to the bayou.

FAST COMPANY: Where’s Shreveport exactly?

JOHN GRINDLEY: As Louisiana is a boot, it’s at the top of the state, where you put your foot in, at the top left. We’re in what’s called the Ark-La-Tex, where Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas meet. You couldn’t be further from New Orleans and still be in the same state. We’re about five hours from New Orleans, but three hours from Dallas and Little Rock. People ask, are you in a hurricane zone? No, we couldn’t be further. During Katrina we got a nasty rainstorm, but that’s about it.

Four decades ago, Danish medical students Jørn Dyerberg and Hans Olaf Bang traveled west across the Greenland ice sheet on dogsleds to test a theory. For many years prior to their journey, there had been anecdotal reports that Greenland Eskimos had an extremely low incidence of heart disease, and Dyerberg and Bang speculated that this was linked to the high levels of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) in the fish the native people consumed on a daily basis. After collecting and analyzing scores of blood samples, their hypothesis was borne out, and ever since, the medical and scientific community has been on a quest to determine exactly how PUFAs impart protective effects, and what amount must be ingested in order to achieve such benefits. Nearly 40 years and thousands of published studies later, however, these questions remain largely unanswered.

Google used to have really embarrassing hiring practices. It would hardly look at applicants who hadn't gone to an Ivy League school, MIT, Cal Tech, or Stanford. It also actually used to ask executives and engineers in their mid-30s about their college GPAs. The worst thing Google HR would do was ask applicants insanely difficult "brain teaser" interview questions. Gayle Laakmann McDowell, a former Google software engineer and author of The Google Resume, says the company has finally "banned" most of these awful hiring practices.

On November 8, 2012, the BioPark hosted Rachel King, CEO of GlycoMimetics, as part of its Business of Bio speaker series. Ms. King spoke before an active, question-filled audience from the University of Maryland campus in Baltimore and from bioscience companies throughout the region.

Opening her discussion with a review of the venture financing climate within the life sciences industry during 2012, Ms. King said, “There is a challenge today with respect to the risk level that a venture capitalist is willing to take. Investments are going towards later-stage programs. That’s not to say early deals don’t get done – but they are harder to secure.”

Des Moines – Nov. 12, 2012 — The Iowa Innovation Corporation was the recipient of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds (NASVF) 2012 award for Best Approach for Technology-Based Economic Development. The award was presented October 16 during NASVF’s 19th Annual Conference in Cleveland, attended by more than 200 local, regional and national leaders in innovation capital and technology-based economic development. The award recognizes the achievements by a technology-based economic development organization in the development of innovative best practices and effective economic development models.

Thankfully the election is over (almost). A few seats are yet to be determined. Although many of our readers asked for voting "advice," we didn't feel it was proper for us to "endorse" candidates. That's your decision, but we have, and will continue to tell you about your senators and congressmen as it relates to SBIR and small business. Your interaction with them is vitally important.

Patents. A single word that incites a fervor in the online tech blogging realm, perhaps only after the emotional responses to the iPhone vs. Android battle or TechCrunch using expletives in an article title.

With the publicity of the Apple and Samsung patent litigation, it became evident that some authors and commenters around the web do not fully understand patents and the patent system. In some instances, the scope of a patent was blown way out of proportion and deemed excessively broad. In other instances, conclusory statements were directed toward the entire patent system without an explanation or justification. For example, some people claim that patents are outdated relics that now only serve to stifle innovation. Typically, this argument has been made in regards to so-called “software patents,” but it is interpreted by many as implicating the entire patent system.

The new patent law put into place by the America Invents Act on September 16, 2011, goes into effect Spring 2013. This marks a fundamental change in US patent protection, moving away from the current first-to-invent rule to the international standard, first-to-file.

“Effectively, this creates a race to the patent office,” according to Patrick Richards of Richards Patent Law PC. “In a race of established, well-funded businesses with defined intellectual property protection strategies (and patent attorneys in-house or working closely with the business) versus entrepreneurs that may not have any experience with the patent system and the funds to pursue robust patent strategies, the advantage clearly goes to the businesses,” Richards said.

What the federal information technology world needs is an efficiency button. Push it and IT projects come in on time and on budget. They perform as described, requiring minimal human and technical resources.

Sorry, no button.

Instead, government IT initiatives—some monumental, some incremental—are helping managers deliver results in new ways. These strategies aim to improve agency efforts to design, buy, implement and troubleshoot IT projects.

IT faster, cheaper, smarter: Here are five approaches to getting it done.

She answered questions like: ” What are capital calls?” “Where does money come from?” “How does a venture capital fund work?” She also offered her personal perspective on investing — bear in mind that there may be some discrepancies among investors.

While I have been an entrepreneur for more than 20 years of my life, I have been an angel investor for less than one. As such, I have a pretty unique position of still being able to understand exactly how entrepreneurs feel, while now sitting on the other side of the table negotiating against them as the investor.

Filling this new role at this time in my career is somewhat comparable to being that 20- or 30-something young parent who is still cool enough to remember what it is like to be the teenager, but now has to play the role of the grown-up who sets and enforces rules. You feel a bit like a little kid in a grown-up’s life. I can empathize completely with the angst these entrepreneurs are experiencing as they have put everything on the line and are just trying to make it. But at the same time, I know that, as an investor, I must play the part of setting expectations and enforcing fair valuations. I decided I would tap into my “still cool enough to remember” side in this column and try to give the best advice I can to those entrepreneurs who are trying to win over an investor.

In the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, there is much discussion of the ’10,000-hour rule.’ The rule states that it takes about 10,000 hours of dedicated practice to truly have mastery of any skill – whether it be playing bass guitar, web development, skateboarding, or ping-pong playing.

Two of Gladwell’s strongest examples are Bill Gates and The Beatles. The empowering message here is not that Bill Gates or The Beatles are freaks of nature or flukes, but that they each had over 10,000 of dedication to their chosen craft. While we may not all be as quippy clever and musically gifted as the Beatles or as doggedly determined in cracking codes as Bill Gates, the message is we all have what it takes to succeed – if we dedicate the time and type of attention required.

What I am about to say is not a political statement. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I look at the results of the 2012 election through the prism of business and sales practices. To me, there are stark lessons that can be learned by sales people and small business owners.

Let’s start by taking a look at what happened.

On November 6th Americans cast their votes for who they wanted as President and Vice-President of the United States. All of the information available at the time showed that 49% of the population was going to vote for the Democrat and 49% of the population was going to vote for the Republican. That left only 2% up for grabs. That 2% was the Independents and it became a target market.

Since 1978, the Chinese economy has seen phenomenal growth. While that’s not in dispute, the reason why China has managed to grow so fast and whether it can maintain that growth is far less clear. The consensus view among China scholars is that the country has grown by relying heavily on investments, exports, and its huge low-cost labor force. That formula has worked well so far, but evidence indicates that China is getting less and less from this approach lately. The country’s export growth is decelerating quickly, and China is already investing an amount equivalent to about half of its GDP—which is probably the highest level ever among any country in peacetime.

China has just completed its once-in-a-decade leadership transition. An item that should be high on the new leadership’s agenda is changing the country’s strategy so that its growth wastes less energy, requires less investment, and is less reliant on exploiting cheap labor as a competitive advantage. We do not know the policy deliberations among the Chinese leaders; in fact we don’t know whether or not these policy discussions are taking place at the highest echelons of the Chinese government. What we do know is that a transition out of the rapid growth model of the last three decades will be fraught with technical uncertainties and political complexities. But it is critical that it happens.

There is so much written these days about how to attract investors that most entrepreneurs “assume” they need funding, and don’t even consider a plan for “bootstrapping,” or self-financing their startup. Yet, according to many sources, over 90 percent of all businesses are started and grown with no equity financing, and many others would have been better off without it.

According to the book, “Small Business, Big Vision,” by self-made entrepreneurs Adam and Matthew Toren, it’s really a question of need versus want. We all want to have our vision realized sooner rather than later, but it can be a big mistake to bring in investors rather than patiently building your business at a slow, steady pace (organic growth).

With over 100 startup accelerators active today, going through an accelerator can seem like a rite of passage. It’s what startups do – the logical step between Startup Weekend and a round of funding. But an accelerator is actually a substantial commitment. You give up around 7 percent equity in your startup. You might have to move to a different city. And you’re agreeing to work late hours for a few months straight. As long as you’re doing all this, you might as well pick the best program for you.

Before you take the plunge into an accelerator, here are five questions to ask yourself:

My friends and Mother Teresa have something in common. I suspect you do, too.

Brett, Christina, Jon, Marty, Mike, Russ and Todd all could be retired and living a life of luxury but instead are nose-down struggling to be successful every day. They all started their companies from nothing and sold them for millions. But like most of the entrepreneurs I know, they didn’t retire to some sunbaked part of the world to enjoy fine wine and leisure. Instead, they pushed the reset button and took on another industry, another challenge, another cause, another headache, another banker, another recession.

Choosing the right crowdfunding platform for your business or project can be an overwhelming process. At face value, many of the popular sites can look identical, and the numerous factors involved can turn this into a complicated decision. The first step in choosing a crowdfunding platform is to ensure that you have a solid idea that will appeal to the crowdfunding model.

It’s helpful to keep in mind that people tend to pledge money for three different reasons:

1. They relate to the message or cause behind your project

2. They connect to the creative presentation of your materials

3. They are interested in a physical aspect of your project, i.e. the rewards

Have you ever been asked for feedback — but had the feeling that it wasn't a genuine request?

Take this example: A friend of mine who works for a large global corporation recently sent a note to her CEO, sharing her views on questions that he raised on his internal blog. The next week she received a call (more of a reprimand) from HR asking why she had emailed the CEO. She responded, "Well, the CEO said, 'Let me know what you think.' So I did." Sure enough, that statement was removed in the CEO's next blog post.

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